


Referendums Anonymous

by darkandstormyslash



Series: Still in the thick of it [4]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Brexit, Gen, Politics, uk recent political history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: Ollie Reeder and Ben Swain try to get their head around the latest political developments: the results of the Brexit referendum.This takes place in the same universe as my previous The Thick Of It stories, but works fine as a stand alone.





	Referendums Anonymous

It’s around 4am that Ollie starts to get a bit of a sinking feeling. A nagging sort of doubt deep within him that things are not going as planned. He’s had plenty of practice at recognising when the political machine is about to go tits up, and this is more than just tits up this is arse up and head up as well. These tits are in the stratosphere.

When the result of the Brexit referendum is announced, he almost feels a smug sense of satisfaction. There has been a massive political screw-up of epic proportions and none of it is his fault. He hasn’t slept all night, but he’s buzzing now and he can’t really think of anything to do, so he goes in to work.

His ‘office’ is no longer an office, but a desk in Ben Swain’s office. Ben Swain was the only person willing to grudgingly employ him, when Ollie Reeder became the second most toxic person in the opposition after Dan Miller’s complete failure to get elected. Ben Swain thinks he’s playing the long game, and to a certain extent he’s been proved right. He’s now in the shadow cabinet again because after Dan Miller’s defeat the entire opposition, in Ollie’s opinion, went collectively mad, elected a geography teacher as Party Leader, and has been haemorrhaging ministers ever since. The only reason Ben Swain is back on the front benches is because it was a choice between Ben or putting a hat on a pot plant and dragging it down to be Shadow Minister for Transport.

Ben is in as well, uncharacteristically early and even more uncharacteristically silent. They switch on the telly and stare at it while the results are confirmed. Ben shakes his head, “Can’t believe it. Who would’ve expected that?”

“I wonder if Malcolm did.” Ollie says almost automatically, and Ben frowns at him then points at a jar on the desk. It’s labelled 'MALCOLM TUCKER' and is full of pound coins. Without complaint, Ollie puts a pound in the jar and sits back down.

“I wonder if he did though.”

“Are you ever going to manage to go a day in your life without mentioning that man’s name?” Ben replies huffily, but less huffily than usual because he’s still clearly slightly in shock.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just … you know. If anyone would have seen it coming…”

“Nobody saw it coming.” Ben shakes his head, “Nobody prepared for this. Nobody.”

“It was quiet all the way in.” Ollie glances nervously at the door, “It feels like someone’s died. I mean this is their cockup, we should be celebrating, surely.”

Ben looks down at the notepad in front of him where he’s been trying to draft an official response. It contains a doodle of an egg with a face and a tea-stain. “There’s a difference though, isn’t there, between trying to push each other off the boat and drilling a massive great hole in the bottom of it.”

 _Malcolm_. Ollie wants to say the name. _What would Malcolm do, what would Malcolm think?_

By the end of that day, the Brexit day, the Prime Minister has resigned. Ollie is still at work but by now the tiredness has set in just as the activity level has gone frantic. Ben is off in some meeting, and Ollie is answering phones and trying to make sense of a mad world.

“Resigned!” Ben splutters down the phone at him. “Not that I’m surprised. He doesn’t want to do it. Nobody wants to do it. It’s political suicide.”

“He should be on some sort of scheme.” Ollie agrees, wedging the phone in between his shoulder and ear while his fingers click away on the laptop, “Referendums Anonymous. Are you addicted to calling high stakes referendums? Remember, when the fun stops, stop.”

“Well he’s stopped.”

“Fucked a pig, then fucked a country.”

Ben guffaws down the phone, “We never used that properly, did we? Malcolm would’ve loved that.”

Ollie smirks, “I’ll put a pound in the Tucker-jar.”

“You do that. Then try and get me some headline coverage. We’re out of the wilderness, Ollie! Or rather, everyone’s in the wilderness now, all blundering about. It’s madness. I mean we may have the most unelectable Leader since that drunken alcoholic but we’re actually in with a chance.”

“I’m recording this, you know.” Ollie says, just on the off-chance it makes Ben wet himself. “Joke, joke. Watch what you say though.”

“Loose lips sink front-benchers.” Ben answers, and hangs up.

* * *

Ollie desperately wants to get in touch with Emma, if only to gloat. For the last few years he’s hated her, because she’s been doing the job he always wanted, and doing it better than he knows he could. Part of him, initially, even wanted to get back together with her, if only because he felt she deserved to suffer. He’s pretty sure she’s got someone else now, some pretty attractive haw-hawing upper class twit who has the approval of the Prime Minister. Or at least, the ex-Prime Minister.

To his surprise, she agrees to meet him at a Costa coffee in Westminster. She buys a small salad and pokes it, trying not to look at him.

“So…” he says eventually, but can’t think of anywhere to take it.

She shakes her head and sighs, “How are we going to do this then, you tell me what your lot is doing and I tell you what my lot is? Is that the level we’ve sunk to? Cold War spies exchanging information?”

Ollie shrugs, “My lot are running around like headless chickens.”

“Likewise.”

They eat in silence for a bit, or rather Ollie eats in silence while Emma checks her phone and ignores her salad. Eventually Ollie feels something has to be said, “Why did he do it? Call the Brexit referendum to start with?”

“The country was tearing itself apart.” It’s a line, he knows, and not a bad one all things considered. She says it too quickly, too automatically, and besides it’s not true.

“No it wasn’t.”

“Well the party was tearing itself apart. Have you honestly come here just to gloat? Or are you trying to feel important…” her mouth twists into something like a smile, “Are you trying to feel like Malcolm.”

Ollie moodily drops his sandwich. “Why does it always come back to Malcolm?”

“Because he pulled all your strings and now he’s gone you’re like a little dangling puppet.” Emma’s looking a bit happier now, although she’s still paying half attention to her phone. “As Phil would say, he was the Emperor to your Darth Vader.”

“Darth Vader threw the Emperor into an abyss.” Ollie snaps, “Except of course in Star Wars the Emperor didn’t hang around and write passive aggressive newspaper columns about how shit Darth Vader was. There really isn’t a popular culture reference for what Malcolm did to me.”

“What about, oh what’s that thing with the dragons. Game of Thrones. You’re like that guy who got tied to a cross and had his willy chopped off.”

“I don’t watch it.” Ollie lies, “Besides Malcolm didn’t _castrate_ me. That would’ve been Dan Miller.”

“So long as we both agree someone did.”

Ollie watches as her phone buzzes again, and her fingers click away at the text. Nobody is texting him. “Are you out of a job then?”

“What, no.”

“PMs resigned.”

“So there’ll be a new one.” She spares him a brief withering glance, but he knows her withering glances now and this is one that betrays a deep insecurity. She isn’t sure at all about her job, he suspects nobody in the opposition is.

Its spinners and losers all over again, except this time the prize for winning is to clean up a massive political turd that’s almost guaranteed to poison whoever touches it.

“Any idea who?” He asks brightly.

Her phone rings and she stands up, “Sorry Ollie, I have to take this. I don’t know any further information about the possible Prime Ministerial candidates.” She spares him a brief look that’s almost fond, “If I did, do you really think I’d tell you?”

* * *

Somewhere deep in the shrunken and withered little organ that remains of his heart, Ollie knows that Ben Swain is not a good politician. Ben isn’t interested in the public, or in the government, and he certainly isn’t interested in laws. He’s playing a political game and if you’re going to play political games, Ollie’s inner Malcolm growls, you should at least have the fucking decency to play them _well._

Ben does not play well. He bluffs badly and agrees too easily with people saying what he wants to hear. His self confidence levels rise in inverse proportion to his own ability and, privately, Ollie thinks he rather despises Ben Swain.

But Ben Swain is the only person willing to employ him and, at the end of the day, Ben Swain is easy enough to manage. Say the right words, poke him in the right direction, and Ben will go home happy. If Ben Swain ever actually gets into government, Ollie thinks, it will be a sad day for the British Public.

“Do you think we could do it?” Ben asks, leaning back in his chair, staring at the telly again as a parade of Prime Ministerial hopefuls jostle onto the screen like the ugliest X-factor. “Do you think if they held an election now, if we got in, we could actually deliver this Brexit malarkey?”

“If they call an election now, they’d be mad.” Ollie responds, “If we got in the public would be mad, and if we delivered Brexit we’d be mad.”

“I suppose.” Ben fiddles with the pen on his desk, “Which way did you vote? I mean personally. Are you a Bremainer or a Brexiteer?”

“I voted remain of course.” Ollie gives him a sideways look, “Didn’t you?”

“Well, I suppose obviously I did, all the same…” Ben gives him a hopeful look and Ollie sees the spirit of Dunkirk, the Falklands, the Blitz, and all the wives of Henry the Eighth in that look. It’s a look brought up on the wrong kind of history lessons, a look of Bulldogs and White Cliffs and Empire. A look that says: _Wasn’t there a time, wasn’t there, when we were great? Great Britain?_ It’s a look that spent a whole childhood being taught that the past was glorious before being shoved into an un-glorious present. It’s a look that never _believed_ , exactly, that immigrants were ruining the country and single mothers were being given five-story mansions by the taxpayer, but still wondered why, if it wasn’t true, everyone was always talking about it.

“One of the things I’ll never understand,” Ollie answers slowly, because he’s treading a thin line here between pleasing Ben Swain and standing up for sanity, “Is the way people seem to think Dunkirk was a _good_ thing.”

Ben’s forehead creases, “What? What are you talking about?”

“Just…” Ollie hesitates. Just what? Just that he can’t even articulate himself why he knows Brexit is a disastrous idea, just that he knows it _is_. It’s the past – rising up like a bad meal and splattering all over the kebab-shop doorway of the present. He remembers the fuss it took to get the country _into_ the EU in the first place, it almost seems bloody minded to leave now.

Ben gives Ollie what he thinks is a searching look. “Do you know what our glorious party leader thinks of Brexit?”

“I can guess.” It comes out rather more sulkily that Ollie intended, “We weren’t campaigning all that strongly against it.”

Ben taps the Tucker-jar. “You’re thinking about him.”

“I don’t spend all my time thinking about Malcolm Tucker.”

“Yes you do, pay up. Pay up and pretend that you voted for any other reason than because he got that piece in the _Guardian_ telling you to be Bremainer.”

“Nobody actually says ‘Bremainer’” Ollie complains, reaching forward and sticking a pound into the jar. “It’s filling up again, almost time for a chocolate run.”

“Soon, Ollie, soon.” Ben answers magnanimously, and Ollie can’t work out if he’s talking about politics or chocolate.

Knowing Ben Swain, it’s probably chocolate.

**Author's Note:**

> I case you can't tell I did genuinely vote for the geography teacher :p  
> I was going to try and do Malcolm's POV but it would just be three chapters of the word FUCK in angry caps-lock.


End file.
